Archive for the ‘Resonance’ Category
Introducing Palindromic Queries
Google education
It was interesting today that I overheard a young sales exec who’s just starting to learn the ropes talking with her boss. Having shown a keenness to gain more proficiency in sales, I listened as she asked whether she could do a sales course.
Intuitively, the product of a successful linear education sees the step before ‘doing’ as ‘being taught’.
She asked for my advice on courses. I said, ‘if you want to learn something, Google it. Then do it.’
That’s it.
The thing is, more new information will be generated worldwide this year than in the previous 5,000 years. Right now the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. This means half of what students learn in their first year will be outdated by their third.
Now more than ever it’s important not to use linear education as a magic (and perpetually disappointing, of course) crutch to prop you up when you’re faced with doing. Infinite sources of learning are instantly available to anyone with an internet connection. Free tools of discovery are everyday.
The journey of discovery off your own bat is as valuable and unexpectedly revealing as the output you desired when you started searching.
Never underestimate the effectiveness of a Google education. The ability to learn what you should listen to versus the abundance of crap you should cast aside is the new recital.
Brookside, postboxes & SaaS development
Loads of illuminating analogies have emerged in conversations with Andrew Missingham, but today there’s one in particular that popped up…
You may remember when the soap Brookside launched on Channel 4. The storylines were based around folk living in a close of houses. They had some trouble at the outset however, in that script writers realised they hadn’t created enough ‘stock devices’ – places where people could meet that would fuel the dramatic unfolding of events. Their answer was to put a postbox on the street, so residents would accidentally meet.
Given that the ability to innovate relies on diverse skillsets and knowledge banks coming together, this analogy is more relevant than ever. New knowledge uncovered by researchers, for example, needs to be matched with entrepreneurs who can interpret and understand the opportunities, then commercialise… in turn with the help of skilled troops, whether designers, developers, craftsmen etc.
Barriers to entering this innovation ecosystem are lower than ever – and the very reason for the existence of Scramblr is to lower them even further.
The question I’m asking myself today, is ‘What are our postboxes?’
Humanity 2.0 on slideshare homepage
Nice one slideshare!
“Hey ResonanceBlog!
Your presentation Complexity & Humanity 2.0 has been selected amongst the ‘Top Presentations of the Day’ on the SlideShare homepage.
Our editorial team would like to thank you for this awesome presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday.
Congratulations! Have a Great Day!
- The SlideShare team
p.s. Why not blog/twitter this and let the world know about the masterpiece you have created?”
The discovery of complexity
Networks are an essential ingredient in any complex adaptive system. In biology, molecules interact in cells, cells interact in organisms, organisms interact in ecosystems. As Eric D. Beinhocker points out in one of my favourite books, ‘The Origin of Wealth’:
“The economic world likewise depends on networks. The earth is girdled by roads, sewers, water systems, electrical grids, railroad tracks, gas lines, radio waves, television signals and fiber-optic cables. These provide the highways and byways of the matter, energy and information flowing through the open system of the economy. The economy also contains massively complex virtual networks: people interact in companies, companies interact in markets and markets interact in the global economy. Just as in biology, the networks of the economic world are arranged in hierarchies of networks within networks.”
BUT… traditional economics glossed over networks because they didn’t fit neatly into the equilibrium paradigm, whereby the economy was likened to an equilibrium system, i.e. behaving like a ball dropped into a bowl, rolling around until finally settling in a predictable place, until something external disrupts it. More recently the perfect sums have been ditched in favour of the idea that the economy is a complex adaptive system, i.e. a system of dynamically interacting parts in which micro-level interactions lead to the emergence of macro-level behaviour patterns. A single ant or water molecule is boring on its own, but naturally becomes an army or whirlpool as a byproduct of complex interactions. People are the same – the internet is the same. If a system reaches a state of equilibrium, it’s essentially dead.
Physics has likewise evolved to embrace complexity in favour of neat maths that doesn’t fit reality. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy, a measure of disorder or randomness in a system, is always increasing. The universe as a whole is drifting from a state of order to disorder.
Our brains are made to deal with complexity, but we don’t make decisions by logically churning through every available piece of information. Instead we satisfice, taking the information we have and doing the best we can. Cognitive science has grown to recognise that we’re much better at inductive than deductive reasoning. We spot patterns and weave stories around metaphors and analogies.
Computers are the opposite, helping make up for our deductive shortfalls. It’s interesting that the rise of agile development follows the same pattern as new knowledge in physics, biology, economics and other advanced fields of discovery; as does the creation of new business models that embrace our inherent sociability and the complexity of networks. We’re no longer seeking the perfect, no longer adopting unrealistic assumptions to make the maths work out in the equilibrium framework we’ve been convinced explains everything for so long.
We know the energy inherent in what we’re doing renders equilibrium not only irrelevant, but impossible.
Culture of participation
The ironic thing about the culture of participation brought about by our newly networked society and universal(ish) toolset, is the fact it could edge many of us into a life of non-participation – i.e. non-participation in traditional systems. Whether we like it or not, there are certain traditional systems ’successful’ people are somewhat forced to tolerate, in order to be ’successful’. How many rich people do you know who truly don’t care about the small things that frame the world of business, entrepreneurship, social media etc?
As Marc Lewis once said to me, you can whack the ball just outside the line and scream like hell that it’s in and you might get away with it. Or you can play it safe and play the ball within the line. But if you whack it way out of the court all together, people just laugh and you fail.
Isn’t that a real shame?
We have a very tame idea of what’s maverick in the media industry. In my post about the ‘Future of TV Advertising’ I talked a bit about the offense of being deemed maverick for pointing out some pretty basic home truths about broadcasting. Ego-wise, people learn to love this sort of self-positioning. Speakers, authors, bloggers who comment on the future of any industry in a way that’s non-traditional revel in their maverick status. But it is really maverick? What would the world be like if we reframed our judgment? I think we might just find out, given that social media tools and connectivity now allow us to survive without physical participation in the system we’re influencing (somewhat paradoxical). Real mavericks now have the exposure to influence wannabes, which makes for interesting viewing and enough inspiration to tip others over the edge.
The word ‘alternative’ could (and I hope it will) take up a whole new meaning.
Now here are a couple of true mavericks:
Now, it just so happens that they’re in the extreme sports arena, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that they’ve dedicated their lives to a particular feeling of resonance they only get when pursuing the thing they love; and the fact they risk everything, because nothing matters more.
How many industry ‘mavericks’ can we say that about?
Our biased brains
I had a fascinating chat with Ogilvy Group UK Vice-Chairman Rory Sutherland the other day. We talked about the need for advertising to understand psychology and behaviour, rather than focusing on proposition alone.
On that note, it’s always useful to be reminded of how our heads really work; and how our biases affect belief formation and decision-making. Here are some examples:
* Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behaviour.
* Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.
* Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
* Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
* Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.
* Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.
* Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
* Denomination effect — the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) than large amounts (e.g. bills).
* Distinction bias — the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
* Endowment effect — “the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it”.
* Experimenter’s or Expectation bias — the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
* Framing — Using an approach or description of the situation or issue that is too narrow. Also framing effect — drawing different conclusions based on how data is presented.
* Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.
* Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
* Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
* Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
* Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.
* Loss aversion — “the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it”.
* Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
* Moral credential effect — the tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.
* Need for closure — the need to reach a verdict in important matters; to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and uncertainty. The personal context (time or social pressure) might increase this bias.
* Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
* Not Invented Here — the tendency to ignore that a product or solution already exists, because its source is seen as an “enemy” or as “inferior”.
* Omission bias — the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
* Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
* Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
* Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
* Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
* Reactance — the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
* Restraint bias – the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
* Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
* Semmelweis reflex — the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.
* Status quo bias — the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).
* Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
* Wishful thinking — the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.
* Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
Big lumpy clumpy balls of crap
Leading on from the previous post about the coolness of chaos…
Have you ever had to deal with a big lumpy piece of complex old software that was written years ago, then updated countless times, new bits added on, a new guy adding another bit, bolt-ons, sticking plasters and fixes… until it’s a big slow cumbersome piece of crap nobody can change or work with?
That’s pretty much industry as it stands – and other big systems for that matter (e.g. government, education). Since the industrial revolution, we’ve built up this massive ball of crap. Now nobody can do a damn thing with it.
The most obvious example that’s hurting right now is the whole free thing. We can listen to music for free. We can watch TV shows for free. We can read books for free. This of course screws record companies, publishers, broadcasters… oh yeah, and then there’s the whole fact that we don’t pay a blind bit of notice to advertising. The big massive balls of crap are stuffed because they’re prisoners within their own structures – too slow, too fat, too inflexible. They’re waiting to die, with their fingers in their ears, screaming ‘lah lah lah!’ as nimble network-based businesses spring up under the radar, taking over the world at lightning pace.
At the end of the day, all a business traditionally does is ensure people get paid. That’s it, when you think about it. Traditionally the big boys get paid much more than the little boys, but it’s just a bunch of individuals getting paid.
Now, think about the overhead in a big-lump-of-crap business. Big shiny offices, management structures, HR departments, blah blah blah. Think about MARKETING BUDGETS… zillions and squillions… to make sure you sell LOADS to make sure you can pay the overheads and pay the individuals (staff, bosses, shareholders etc). So we pay more to make more to sell more to pay more.
And it ain’t just the hippies who know sustainability is an issue. We need to stop producing so much crap. Reuse, reduce, recycle and all that jazz. Yet still we need to make people want more so they buy more so we sell more to pay individuals.
What if we scrapped all the crap?
What if there were no management structures?
What if there were no multi-million advertising / marketing budgets?
What if there were more or less no overheads?
Answer? We wouldn’t need to sell as much, so we wouldn’t MAKE as much. Sweet! It isn’t rocket science.
And could we do business without these business-as-usual / this-is-business stuff that costs so much? Hell yeah. It’s already happening. It’s soooo easy to change from ground level, as a bunch of individuals, with no management, a pinch of leadership and a sprinkling of magic dust – in comparison to attempting change from the ‘top’. It’s no surprise that people feel pretty darn good when they’re an individual within a collective, creating profit through good growth, without all the psychologically, environmentally (and every other ‘ally’) damaging self-fulfilling prophecies inherent in business as we know it.
I mean, we all know we went a bit crazy over the past few years (decades). We all got a bit carried away. It’s like full on raving in the 80s/90s (or whatever equivalent!). Bloody hell what a blast. Dance your face off – time of your life. But after a few years everybody starts to feel like crap, go nuts and realise it’s no fun any more and life’s better when you feel good. The individuals-formerly-known-as-consumers are just started to ease off the uppers. They’ve been turning your brain cells to mush and it’s much nicer to be wide awake.
So what now? Sit back and wait until the chaos period is over and this network-based commerce phase kicks in and emerges as the new status quo?
Err… that would be pretty boring.
Instead you could join a tribe. Or you could start one. Soon it’ll pay way more than your job (if that’s what you care about)… and really when you get into the swing of the new way you won’t give a toss.
Take it a leap beyond ‘markets are conversations’ into the realms of DOING, not planning. ACTION IS THE NEW FORECASTING.
Our world might be a giant hologram
Craig Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, reckons “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”
For the past seven years, a team in Germany has been searching for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 hasn’t detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.
Check this out.
Management is so last century
As David Weinberger said in The Cluetrain Manifesto, ‘Management is a powerful force, part of a larger life-scheme that promises us health, prosperity, calm and no surprises in every aspect of our lives, from health to wealth to good weather and moderately heated coffee from McDonald’s. We are all victims of this assault on voice, the attempt to get us to shut up and listen to the narrowest range of ideas imaginable.’
Here here.
It’s bizarre, when you think about it, that we seek health, prosperity and calm in a framework that’s configured to avoid surprises (not to mention the fact such management frameworks do quite the opposite, restricting prosperity and wrecking your health… duh!).
Essentially a framework that avoids surprises is setting us up for a fall, given that life is totally unpredictable (just look at the accuracy of trending, forecasting and predicting in retrospect – we’re pretty much always wrong, usually wildly, except for the one in a zillion folk who are hailed as heros / experts because they won the prediction lottery).
We’re actively encouraged (forced?) to surrender our individuality in return for a financial bribe and a supposedly non-disturbing, secure, predictable, managed environment. How damaging is that?
If we focused on understanding basic psychology – and in particular neuropsychology – rather than technology, management, or most things to do with ‘professionalism’, we’d learn to cope with surprises. There’s no anti-depressant and productivity tool quite like understanding what your brain is up to (which is normally the opposite of all the crap we reel off in our inner narrative). We’d learn to adopt calm by flicking switches that send neurons on productive paths, as opposed to destructive panic / depression / fear trains of thought. Most importantly, we’d learn that we have myriad choices… without all the BS constrains we confabulate, largely as a result of managed structures and irrational fears.
Coupled with the lack of cynicism and suckerism for imbalance and hype, our denial, biases and love of fallacy are at best sub-optimum… at worst bloody dangerous.
Every last pirate-lynching dinosaur the management structure spews out has been conditioned to fear change – to be unwilling to accept that bettering society involves doing new stuff that isn’t business as usual. It’s not business as usual! IT IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL!! Some folk never seem to get it. “But I’ll be out of a job!” they shriek. “More fool you,” we think quietly, while we bend and flex and change at pace with the world… mostly ignoring them and opting to avoid a ‘proper job’ at all costs (although some of us work form the inside).
The thing is, the pirates, the Scrmblrs and every single one of us are changing and bettering society from the bottom up. We’re faster, more innovative and powerful. We organise without organisations. We run on leadership, not management; passion, not KPIs. We’re not afraid to let one-another loose… in fact we love loose cannons. They’re our favourite.
You know who you are!
(Email me!)
Copyright ResonanceBlog 2009
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